Publications

As the first American academic journal devoted to Taiwan literature with its continued publication in the last sixteen years, this journal has maintained a unique position in the field providing the necessary academic resources of Taiwan literature in English translation. With assistance of a great number of excellent translators who have contributed to the journal, the US-Taiwan Literature Foundation has been established as a professional institute and will continue to carry on a long-term project of English translation of Taiwan literature to enhance the study of Taiwan literature from international perspectives. 

In addition to publishing the biannual journal, the US-Taiwan Literature Foundation plans to initiate two long-term publication projects: Taiwan Writers Translation Series and Taiwan Literature Chinese-English Bilingual Series.

Taiwan Writers Translation Series aims at English translation of masterpieces or selected representative works of Taiwan writers. While the journal develops a theme for each issue, exposing various aspects of Taiwan literature and exploring its horizontal breadth, the Taiwan Writers Translation Series will focus instead on the writer, with the objective of demonstrating the vertical lines of development, to display the historical positions of major writers and the lineages of traditions of Taiwan literature.

Taiwan Literature Chinese-English Bilingual Series aims at providing bilingual readers and anthologies of selected works by Taiwan writers for Taiwanese Americans as well as Chinese readers in general in the Chinese diaspora. As academic publications, these two series target scholars of contemporary Chinese literature and cultural studies and East Asian libraries as its audience, with the certainty that Taiwan literature will be taken as an important emphasis for those who teach contemporary Chinese literature, comparative literature, and world literatures in Chinese at the university level. 

                                                                                                                         

Goals to Achieve through Translation

With continuing effort and development, the US-Taiwan Literature Foundation will ultimately serve as a professional publisher of Taiwan literature in English translation to provide reading and teaching material to public libraries and schools, and through cultural and educational activities. To achieve the literary and educational purposes and by making the works accessible to a broader audience through translation and bilingual publication, the Foundation will help enhance the understanding the historical development of Taiwan literature and deepen the research of Taiwan literature among international scholars as well as understanding for readers in general.

Although the literary tradition of Taiwan literature started with Lai Ho, we  attaché a particular importance to the major writers after him, such as Lung Ying-tsung, Lü Ho-jo, among others, who wrote in Japanese and attained distinction in the 1930s during the Japanese Occupation Period. This period, with its particular historical significance, has received assiduous attention from Japanese scholars, but few from Taiwan are able to undertake the task of conducting primary research in Japanese competently, let alone rendering the original Japanese texts into English. We are particularly interested in and qualified to assume this task, not only because of our editors’ expertise in Japanese, but also because many excellent literary works were written in Japanese by Taiwan writers under Japanese rule, providing rich resources for scholarly exploration particularly in cross-cultural studies, comparative studies, and colonial and postcolonial studies. Because of its research merit, the selection of the representative works of this period deserves prioritization before undertaking translation of post-1945 writers, enhancing the distinctive contribution the Taiwan Writers Translation Series will make to the field.


                                                                                                                         

Projected Publications
預定的出版計劃

In addition to continuing publication of the journal Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, the US-Taiwan Literature Foundation plans to put out the following publications in the coming two years:

1) English translation of An Outline History of Taiwan Literature （《台灣文學史綱》英譯）
    Arthor: Yeh shih-t’ao 葉石濤
    Translators: Christopher Lupke, Kuo-ch’ing Tu, and Robert Backus 

Yeh Shih-t’ao’s Taiwan wenxue shigang (An Outline History of Taiwan Literature) is the unique general outline history of Taiwan literature written by a Taiwan writer and critic, published in 1987. As such, it will retain an historical value for the study of Taiwan literature. A Japanese version, Taiwan bungakushi (A History of Taiwan Literature), translated by Nakajima Toshio and Sawai Noriyuki, published in 2000 with additional ninety pages of translators’ notes, nine pages of reference materials, and sixteen pages of a commentary article, and a revised edition came out in 200?. The English translation will incorporate all the Japanese notes and references and produce the first book of general introduction to the history of Taiwan literature most needed for English readers.

2) Anthologies of Taiwan Literature as textbooks（《台灣文學選集》教材）

3) Taiwan Literature Readers: Chinese-English Bilingual Series （《台灣文學名著》英漢對照讀本）

4) Taiwan Writers Translation Series （《台灣作家英譯叢書》）

5) Digital Publication of the Journal（《臺灣文學英譯叢刊》數位化 ）